Codex Cyprius

Reflection

Codex Cyprius — designated Ke in the New Testament apparatus, catalogued as Paris Grec 63 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France — is a complete ninth-century uncial of the four Gospels, acquired on the island of Cyprus and brought to Paris through the Mediterranean manuscript trade. The 267 vellum folios carry the entire Gospel text in a late uncial hand arranged in two columns, accompanied by the full Eusebian canon apparatus of cross-references that links parallel passages across the four evangelists. The text type is Byzantine: it stands close to the standardized Greek tradition that took shape in the great Constantinopolitan scriptoria and that would dominate Eastern Christianity through the medieval period. Kurt and Barbara Aland placed Cyprius in Category V — a pure Byzantine witness, not contributing independent early variants but valuable as a fixed point in the development of the textus receptus that lies behind the Reformation-era printed Greek New Testaments. The manuscript shows the characteristic features of late Byzantine uncial production: careful column ruling, consistent abbreviations of nomina sacra, and the apparatus that signaled to readers and preachers that they held a complete scholarly Gospel codex. Cyprius is one of the relatively small group of uncials that preserves all four Gospels intact — a quiet but important anchor in the textual history of the New Testament.

Sources: Kurt and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament (Eerdmans, rev. 1995); Caspar René Gregory, Textkritik des Neuen Testamentes (Hinrichs, 1900-1909); David C. Parker, An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts (Cambridge, 2008).